Sheltering from the harsh Laotian sun in the back of a pickup truck, somewhere between Vang Vieng and Vientiane.
This adventure begins shortly after my Sichuanese Tibetan Plateau trip ended. Back in Anren and with 6 weeks of summer break still ahead of me, I had the notion that riding a scooter all the way to Bangkok, where my wife was working on a Chinese tourism startup at the time, would be a good idea. After looking at the distance involved and doing the maths, I decided to skip the southern Sichuan and Yunnan legs of the journey and fly directly to Jinghong, the capital of the Dai minority region Xishuangbanna and China's piece of the Mekong River.
After discussing the scooter plan with my Couchsurfing host Zaza, it became apparent that the paperwork involved in getting it across two borders was going to be very difficult. Contemplating my options, I considered the classic Jinghong to Chiang Saen boat trip that gets you from China to Thailand without having to enter Burma or Laos, but with the events of the Mekong River massacre still fresh in the collective memory, that didn't seem like a good idea either.
As luck would have it, Zaza was about to host two characters who had hitchhiked into town from Kunming and who would provide the "Plan C" that I was looking for. On my second night in Jinghong, over lots of Chinese baijiu, Max, a quirky, home-schooled British kid on a gap year, and Muk, a weathered Korean backpacker, told me of their plans to continue hitching all the way through Laos and into Thailand. When they asked me if I'd care to join them, the sensible adult part of my brain was quoting Danny Glover from Lethal Weapon - "you're too old for this s!#t", while the part of my brain that still thinks I'm 21 (every male has one) was saying "go on, just say yes - after all, you're on holidays".
Apart from a few hours on a bus to get us from somewhere south of Luang Prabang (where we got stuck) to Vang Vieng, we hitched the entire route shown in red.
The next day we were joined by Muk's friend Seungjae, and we shouldered our packs and set off for the Laos border. Even though hitching with 4 people usually isn't recommended in the manual, we found it relatively easy to ride in pairs and keep in touch via SMS (for the Sinophiles reading this, I didn't join WeChat until September that year). The Chinese toll roads were in good condition even at the extreme edges of the Chinese empire, and we made it to Mengla on the first night.
The Lao side of the border was a different story. The highway quickly gave way to a single lane road into Boten, which then turned into long sections of potholed gravel roads (in the rainy season) for most of the way to Luang Prabang. People in Boten didn't seem to understand hitching - they would offer to drop us at the bus station - so we hauled our packs a few kilometres out of town to a gas station, where we started hitting up truck drivers heading south. After several strikes, we finally found a friendly chap with a cabin large enough for all 4 of us atop a huge semitrailer. It was also a semitrailer with a really low low gear, so what followed was a torturous, bumpy 10-hour journey, and being unable to communicate with the driver, we had no idea when our next toilet break would come, or how much longer we had to endure.
Max, Muk and Seungjae, relaxing in Luang Prabang after our "long march"
As you might expect of an 18-year-old backpacker, Max's budget was extremely tight. We're talking 5-dollar-a-night dorm beds tight, and "shopping around street vendors for the cheapest sub-1 dollar sandwich or bowl of noodles" tight. He even convinced us to try to hitchhike to Kuang Si waterfalls, the most touristed spot in Luang Prabang. Needless to say we were unsuccessful, and eventually gave up and split a tuk tuk.
Kuang Si Falls, Luang Prabang, July 2013
A roadside noodle vendor meeting Max's lunch budget specifications.
For the first few days I tried to treat it like a game - let's see how little you can survive on here, I thought, just to prove to yourself that you could still do it if you had to. But when continually searching for the cheapest option began to get in the way of actually enjoying what a place had to offer, I began to tire of it. After experiencing the quintessential backpacker "rite of passage" - tubing in Vang Vieng - I decided it was time to head south and find my wife. Max decided to stay on in Vang Vieng, but Muk, Seungjae and I reunited for one final hitching missing to Vientiane. Which is how I ended up in the back of a pickup truck with a backpacker shirt purchased on Khao Sahn Road wrapped around my head.
On the road again with Muk - it wasn't as fun as it looks.
By the time we made it to Vientiane, I'd had enough hitchhiking for one lifetime. Muk and Seungjae decided to stay in Vientiane, while I bussed it over the border and took a sleeper train from Nong Khai to Bangkok. I spent the rest of the summer (and then some) recovering from the diarrhea that I'd picked up in Tibetan Sichuan and let go untreated during my two weeks on the road. When I reached Bangkok I was under 62kg (normally I'd be around 67 or 68) and didn't really get back to my normal weight until 6 months later.
Perhaps I should have listened to the Murtaugh voice in my head. But then again, sometimes it's good to do hard things; to really push your limits and find out what you're capable of. That's what they taught us at RAAF Officer Training School. It's a mindset that is still with me today, it's just that "pushing your limits" now looks different.
Let's just say it no longer involves a backpack, 5 dollar dorm beds and long rides on chicken buses.
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